"Prepone" is a bit of English Indian that Hamra, a Floridian-turned-Bangalore communications and computer instructor, is trying to curb. Improvised from "postpone," it means to warn of a foreseeable problem, as in, "I am out of my station and, as such, I will prepone the updations until today night," as one of his students wrote in an e-mail. It makes sense, but it's the kind of thing that can bog down a customer service call.

"I was a pain in the ass about grammar in the States. Now I am getting paid for it," Hamra explained.

Bangalore, India's reigning Silicon Valley, is the petri dish of the new world order. Multinationals and start-ups are rushing into the country to take advantage of low costs: Even with their double-digit salary increases of recent years, engineers here get paid about one-fourth or less than their U.S. counterparts. Indians, meanwhile, believe the country's strong history in math and science can transform it into the next South Korea or Taiwan.

Indians believe the country's strong history in math and science can transform it into the next South Korea or Taiwan.

Overall, it resembles what the Old West must have been like. One moment, you're walking past an open-air sewer and a pack of wild dogs in a dusty alley. Turn the corner, and the Yahoo logo blazes across a shiny office building that looks about 15 minutes old. The local newspapers are filled with career advice and stories about the rise of crime. The price of residential real estate has tripled in three years. Confidence runs high.

"We will be the back-office R&D facility for many companies," said Ramesh Emani, president of embedding and product engineering at Indian IT services giant Wipro Technologies, which grew from 19,000 employees to 42,000 last year. (Back in the 1970s, Emani helped create the first made-in-India PC at Wipro.)

Reaching global harmony is going to take some heavy lifting, however--which is where people like Hamra come in. The expatriates who moved here in the last few years serve as sort of an ad-hoc diplomatic corps, educating Indians about the ways of corporate America while developing informal how-to guides for the inevitable incoming wave of Westerners.

For those of you interested in making the jump, expatriate life does have its charms. Dinner for three at the Leela Palace, a luxury hotel with interior ponds and a lobby you could park a zeppelin in, runs about $50. "A lot of people come here on Sunday for brunch. It costs about $20, and there's unlimited champagne," said Cecilia Villalon, an Intel employee finishing up a tour of duty. "Hanging out in five-star hotels is not something I did at home."

Household servants also become an affordable luxury. A full-time driver can be hired for 10,000 rupees a month, or $220. Live-in cooks get paid less than half that much. A four-story, four-bedroom home in an upscale neighborhood can be rented for around $1,300.

Then again, it's a physically dangerous place. "It is not uncommon for people to be electrocuted by fallen power lines," said Ted Eugenis, a